PwerlvlAmy

User Score
9.0

Presentation - 9.0
Gameplay - 9.0
Value - 9.0

Omega strike or Omega miss?

Omega Strike is a Metroidvania like action 2D platformer that is developed by Woblyware and published by Digerati. However, the console port of the game seems to be handled by Stage Clear Studios,so shout out to them for their work on the port.

Due to the game being smaller in nature than recently played stuff, I'm going to try to condense this review down a bit more than my usual reviews so readers can get an easier break down of what the game is all about, in a quick and easy fashion. 

Story: 

Something has gone terribly wrong in the world. The evil Doctor Omega has been testing his new devices on soldiers that hope to become better,faster and stronger, but little does everyone know that Doctor Omega has a much more sinister plot on his mind. One day out of nowhere Doctor Omega's true intent is realized and all soldiers who have been experimented on have become mutated and are now under his complete control. As one of the last few remaining fighters in the world, its up to you and a couple of your friends to stop Doctor Omega once and for all and bring peace back to earth.

Game play: 

Omega Strike plays like a Metroidvania version of Contra or Metal Slug. You move through various locations across an open ended world in search for power cores,coins(currency) and other treasures along the way while on a journey to defeat Doctor Omega and all of his evil goons that stand in your way. Getting through these levels your very first time playing them though will not always be easy nor feasible. Some of the levels require specific characters with special abilities to get through some of the obstacles thrown at you in these levels. But its as easy as a simple swap between characters!

In the game you get a choice of three characters that you can freely swap between at any point in time and each of these characters have specific attributes that are useful to you against specific enemy types or hazards that lay in your way. The character Sarge who wields your standard machine gun, can do a special dodge move which allows you to travel through narrow spaces that no other character can fit through. Bear allows you to move huge heavy objects due to his raw natural strength and he wields a machine gun that shoots big circular bullets in an arc,very useful to hit enemies that can't be reached by a regular machine gun. Lastly you have Ghost, a visor wearing soldier who wields a shot gun and has the unique ability to double jump. His double jump allows you to clear huge gaps across cliffs or get to high to reach places. You'll use him A LOT.

All weapons that each one of the characters use are all upgradeable in order to make them stronger than they were previously. Each one of your upgrades to the weapons will not only increase their power but you will also increase stats such as the length of how far a machine gun can shoot. This can be extremely useful against enemy types that shoot projectiles at you or against enemies that fly and hover towards you. There's roughly 40 plus enemy types in the game, so you will have to pick and choose what weapons by each of the three characters work best based off your scenario. 

As stated earlier,the game does indeed operate on a Metroidvania like style. All levels in this game, totaling 7 in all, are all open ended and are pretty large with tons of ways to explore them. You could feel like you're going in one direction for 10 minutes, only to find out that you can go up or go down and find a completely new path way to either another boss fight or to some secret treasure you may not have discovered yet. Exploration of every section of a level is almost mandatory because there are some items you need to find in order to move on with the story line, but the item you need is scattered somewhere throughout the level. Yikes! looks like you're going to be here awhile!

But while that may seem frustrating, never fear, because this game offers you an in game map that graciously gives you a hint on where to go by highlighting save areas as a red box. Most of my play through I noticed whenever you go to a red box(not the rental place!) and save, a boss fight or an objective is shortly after that. So don't fret if you get lost, just check your map and you will be just fine.  Also while exploring these levels, as stated just a few lines ago, there are boss fights in this game and each one of them is more entertaining than the last one, ranging from huge gorillas to even mech like machinery. Though they aren't that hard and most of the time you can beat them in your first try, they are still fun to fight and you will meet a total of 12 of these bad boys during your exploration of each large level. Always been on your toes and ready to strike!

Environment/Graphics/Other:

Lastly I want to touch upon the graphic style. The style used in this game is like if you mixed Bleed 1 and 2(also by Digerati) and made it have a baby with Metal Slug. That's the only thing I could think of when playing this game and that was actually a joy for me because I love both of those series. All the animations are crisp, clean and the game itself runs buttery smooth with no slow downs or frame rate drops. My only negative I could give this game, truly, would be that it isn't hard enough. Sure this game DOES have a hard mode, but I didn't really find it any more harder than the normal mode. Normal mode I was able to complete the game in roughly 5hrs, hard mode will probably run the average user around 7-8hrs tops if I had to give a random prediction.

Overall thoughts:

My final thoughts in regards to Omega Strike is Digerati and the people involved with them keep making great games and it's a treat to see. The same level of care,design and polish that was used in games like Bleed 1 and 2 is brought to Omega Strike, honed and perfected to give you a classic SNES style shooter/action platformer that is a joy to pick up and play. Other than it being a little on the easy side on any difficulty level, if you're a fan of action platformers or fans of certain series like Contra and Metal Slug, then I say do not miss your chance on playing this because after playing this, you too will be the Alpha and the Omega. But I'm not talking about the Greek alphabet or book of revelations, I'm talking about the 2010 kids movie. Yes, you will feel that bad ass. Scary right?

Omega Strike is out now on Playstation 4,Xbox One and Steam.

https://www.gamenchickgaming.com/blog/omega-strike-review-ps4